My first manuscript, finished more than a year ago, was accomplished through strict nightly time allocation that was motivated by a writers' group deadline every month. The group disbanned and now my WIP is languishing with only 20,000 sorry words in the can. When I look at what I'm doing instead, I am hard pressed to come up with what is absorbing my time. Oddly, I think I'm just relaxing more, sitting with the kids more, reading more, all good things and all in very small increments. My point is that I either decide I'm going to fit writing in or not, and when I do, the other things nudge almost indiscernably to the side to make room.

OH it's so pathetic, but FACEBOOK. Currently I am a SAHM and a normal day for my husband right now is about 6am-10pm. He's working 3 jobs to make up for me losing mine. :-( I have NO ONE TO TALK TO! Unfortunately, it's so addictive it also sucks up my writing time, my cleaning time, my reading time, my...yeah, you get the point. It's a good thing my kids are all in school....

School. It's always school. Over the summer I tend to breeze through writing. Not saying I write every day or with any other degree of consistency, but I get a lot done when I do write, and I write more often. Sure, other things do distract me, but at the end of the day school is what detracts most often from writing. And unfortunately it's why I'm hesitant to start seeking a job next fall, because even though I can schedule around hours that work for me...which unfortunately is actually kind of part of why I can't find work. Hard enough as is with the economy the way it is, and with the whole "can't get a job without experience, need experience to get a job" paradigm, but goddamn scheduling around my hours sucks. So, yeah, where was I going with this? Right, time sucker. School. Definitely school. And eventually work, if I ever find a flipping job.

And actually I find it interesting as I get older I spend less time working on my novel. First novel I wrote, which I still have the MS of tucked away in a bin, was done way way way way way back in 8th grade (okay, it wasn't that long ago, I am only a senior). Had a week and a half off from school in the middle of February for...some reason. Started it the day I got my typewriter, which was three days into the break, on Sunday night. Finished it the following Tuesday morning. About a week of solid type type typing and she was done. She was utter crap, and I delayed editing her for a long time, but she was done in a week and a half. Also she was short. Only 157 pages in the first draft, and that's pages on a typewriter. Probably a much smaller count when you print it. Honestly though, I couldn't write that many pages, typewriter or computer, in a week anymore. Somewhere around the 50s I'd just get burned out and ignore writing for a couple of weeks in favor of friends and Assassin's Creed II (so many nights spent poisoning innocents and slaughtering Venetian guards when I could, and probably should, have been writing, and yet every one of those nights was totally worth it)

So, school mostly, and video games and friends to a lesser extent? Sounds about right. *sigh* I miss the days when I had no friends and had learned to balance my video game addiction with my writing. 8th grade where have you gone?